What is National History Day?

By feliciawalbridge'20 on October 19, 2018

The National History Day (NHD) Club is a school organization that is associated with the NHD national competition. Amanda Xie, one of the leaders of the club, describes NHD as “an organization that provides a competition that allows people to research specific topics of history that they are interested in.” The club tends to attract people who enjoy learning about history because, as Katie Hirnak, another leader of the club, says, “it allows you to introduce your own creativity to how you learn history.” The objective of NHD is to learn about something in history and connect that topic to a yearly theme, and the NHD club here at BHS helps students to create their own projects for competitions at state and national levels that represent the historical knowledge they have gained from their research.

For many, when they join National History Day, they want to win the competition or make it to nationals, but through the process of either doing the project alone of with partners, many skills are obtained. Xie and Hirnak both talked about how they developed better time management skills, as well as researching and public speaking skills. They have also both expressed how participating in NHD, doing the research for a project, and managing all of the required work has given them a better appreciation of the history they have looked at and how. Therefore, while winning is still something they strive for, they also have other goals in mind during this process such as analyzing sources and finding historical impacts. Through this club, many people have not only developed skills that can translate to their school work, but have also developed stronger friendships with the people they have collaborated with.